In a January press conference, Education Minister Petros Efthimiou announced the completion of the first phase of the Greek School Network, putting the country's schoolchildren and educators in touch with each other and with resources the world over.

The conference was attended by students and educators from locales as far-flung as the northern mountain range of Rhodope and the tiny Cycladic islands of Donoussa, and Anafi not in body, but via the globally intersecting fibres of the web. Their presence was a demonstration of the nets indispensable ability to break down the barriers of time and space, as well as barriers like the mountains and seas that dominate Greece's rough-and-tumble geomorphology, with its rocky relief and approximately 200 inhabited isles.

So far, almost 100% of secondary schools are online, as well as some 17% of primary schools. The schools are riding on the digital rails of the Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET), created under the auspices of the Ministry of Development's General Secretariat for Research and Technology to interconnect Greece's academic and research community.

Part of an E.U. initiative aimed at bringing Europe into the information age, the drive to get schools connected is being sponsored jointly by Education minister Petros Efthimiou and Economy minister Nikos Christodoulakis. The plan of expanding and upgrading schools electronic infrastructure includes provisions for the training of educators in the use and teaching of computers and the creation of an infrastructure for e-learning.

Of schools and sites
Already many schools, from Athens to Crete and Lesvos, are enthusiastically exploiting the possibilities of the net in education, creating school websites that offer students access to course materials, problems, questions, even old exams to practice on. Some are more complete than others; one school in Athens Peristeri suburb, for instance, offers material on Religion, Geography, French, Computer Science, History, Physics, Technology and Mathematics on its website.

The sites are usually set up on the initiative of computer science professors, who coax their less technologically-savvy colleagues to partake in the programme and put their course materials on-line, so that students may access it from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover all school websites can be accessed by region via the Education Ministrys website.

It is true that many students don't yet have home Internet access, though the numbers of pcs and Internet use in general are rapidly rising, according to a recent survey by the Greek Research and Technology Network.

Fine-tuning people and gear
One of the programme's targets is to train some 75,000 teachers and professors in computer and Internet skills between 2002 and 2003. And, of course, if they get stuck, they can always turn to their digital-age students for help. Furthermore, the programme, which is being implemented in accordance with the E.U. Information Society Action Plan, also calls for fully equipping schools with pcs and multimedia workstations.

Rather than issuing a call for tenders nationally to find a supplier for the equipment - a process subject to long delays - the ministers decided to invite schools to submit their own individual budget proposals. 1,000 secondary schools and 2,000 elementary schools responded to the call, prompting the ministers to raise the proposed budget to 52,824,651 euros, so as to adequately cover all schools. The mean investment per school is estimated at about 25,000 euros per secondary school and 15,000 euros per primary school.

Installation of the new equipment is expected to be completed by the end of the next academic year. In addition, 1,100 more secondary and technical vocational schools are to be supplied with computer equipment under other Education Ministry programmes. Currently, secondary schools possess about one computer for every 18 students. The country's 9,664 primary, secondary and technical vocational schools have 3,133 fully equipped computer labs and a total of 39,880 computers.

Survival of the e-fittest
The public-sector hustle and bustle to catch the e-train gets its momentum from the E.U'.s e-Europe initiative and in particular its e-learning subsection. The initiative was launched at the Lisbon European Council meeting of March 2000 and led to the creation of the Information Society Action Plan, crystallizing Europe's determination not to fall behind in the struggle for e-existence.

The stated goal of e-Europe is to ensure that the E.U. will be "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy in the world". The plan aims to secure cheaper, faster Internet services for everyone, especially students and researchers, provide training for youth and workers, and stimulate the use of the Internet for everything from e-commerce to public and health services.